Huayna Potosi

Monday 25 - Thursday 28 April 2011

Lawrie´s Birthday present

WHY: Since leaving Púcon, I regretted not climbing Volcano Villarrica. We heading to Bolivia so I re-watched the Top-Gear Bolivia special. I wanted to find out why they made such a big deal of breathing on their drive given they only made it to 5,243m and we were to drive close to this altitude on the Salar trip. I settled on a goal of 6000m & found Huayna Potosi (6088m, 19,974ft). The only regret for this choice is that it´s not 20,000ft but mountain heights don´t include snow so I´ll semi-claim 20k ft!

Monday night I went to the office to try on gear and meet my guide and fellow climbers. There were four guys in our group, two Americans (Andrew & Drew) and a Brit living in Africa (Peter). Our guide (Silviardo) had been climbing the mountains around La Paz for the past eight years. After this I met up with our friends from the Salar trip for a (partial) beer.

Tuesday morning I headed off to the office and packed the remaineder of my gear into a sack, as my rental backpack was on the mountain. We loaded up our minibus and headed up to Al Alto, to stock up on supplies (Coca, Sorochi pills, Water & Chocolate). While the mountain is only 25km from La Paz, it took us a while to get there along a bumpy dirt road. We eventually arrived at base camp (4750m) and had a really nice lunch before heading off to the glacier. We met a group who had just climbed and had the experience described as `Worse than the rape scene from American History X`. The two day tour  headed straight to high camp.

We walked to the glacier (just over 4800m) in our snow boots, which are unforgiving and have no flex so it wasn´t particularily fun. We spent some time getting used to crampons and ice-axes before we found an ice face to climb. When we booked they promised us a 70-80º face to climb, which we got, except they measured incorrectly so it was overhanging through the middle. I hadn´t climbed anything properly in many years so decided to let everyone go first.

Walking to the glacier

`This face is too easy to climb`

First time in ice gear since I was 10.

Mist settling on the glacier

The climb was absolutely the most painful thing I have ever done and it took me a few goes (and spectacular falls) to make it to the top, which I did...just. With the two glove layers I couldn´t grip the ice-axes properly and spent 20 min after the climb with my hands locked in position...hopefully the climb wasn´t this hard!

Lawrie starting the ice climb - the easy bit

Just before a fall - you need your legs!

At the top.

The mist cleared as we were climbing.

We walked back to base camp and were fed again, played cards and worked out why everyone was here. I had rented a -20ºC sleeping bag which came in handy over the night, however I didn´t need the thermals I was wearing!

Wednesday we had breakfast, packed up slowly and headed up to high camp. This was with all gear on loose granite and we climbed to high camp (5180m) in around 1.5hrs. It was really hot in the sun on this walk and I felt dehydrated and so tired! We relaxed during the afternoon, played hackey sack with the refugio owner and met up with the others who left the day before. A few didn´t make it and had altitude sickness between 5,550 - 5,800m. Hopefully the extra time at altitude would help.

The summit wasn´t visible from here.

The full glacier

View from high camp.

Just arrived at high camp - pre snow/hail

High camp hackey sack.

We had an early dinner and went to bed around 6pm, as we needed to get up and leave around 1:30am the next morning. It was very windy and we had small amounts of snow coming through the windows into our room. I slept well considering, while the others in the group couldn´t get the climb out of their heads.

Thursday I woke and put on every piece of clothing that I had. Singlet, thermal top, t-shirt, fleece, softshell & outer jacket. I had on two pairs of llama socks, long johns, pants and waterproof covers, balaclava and thick mittens. It was absolutely freezing (-10ºC) and our waterbottles had partially frozen by the time we stopped for our first drink.

We passed a few groups on the way up (we were the last two groups to leave) and slowly made our way to the top. We caught glimpses of La Paz and icicles along the walk but mostly just had to deal with the cold. I have never been this cold EVER.We passed a few trickly sections of snow bridges across a glacier (the climb used to be technical, with ice climbing) before zig zagging up to near the final ascent.

We started up, with our guide in the lead. The final climb we just had to keep going as their were groups behind us, one foot in front of the other. (I was reminded of Dory from Finding Nemo - `Just keep swimming` and kept going. We finally reached the ridgeline where Sil walked a fresh route about 50cm below the ridge. He instructed me to walk along the top (30cm wide, no raised edge) with him on the other side keeping tension on the (now extended rope). I made the mistake of looking down and realising that one side had a 100m drop (where we had just ascended) while the other (West face) was sheer 1000m of ice. My first steps were a tentative shuffle then I decided that having spikes into snow was smarter and stamped my way across. Drew followed immediately behind me and we walked to the summit, where I was the first tourist up to the top (Drew had joked earlier that I was always going to beat him up, given our rope posistions!)

The sun was just rising at this point and while I got a few photos, I was mostly in awe of the view. You could see across an ocean of clouds with little tiny islands of just the highest peaks and off to Lake Titicaca. We did have quick game of hackey sack at around 6080m before walking back across the ridge (and really seeing the FULL 1000m drop) before trudging back down to high camp.

Sunrise over an ocean of clouds

The hat made it!

At the top!

First two up (for the day at least!)

My thighs were killing at this point and we stopped for a while for lunch. Again the food was great but I still wasn´t very hungry. I made it back to La Paz around 2pm and headed to Wild Rover Hostel to shower and get ready for the next days ride down the death road.

Nowhere near the top - people in back for scale!



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